Monday, July 23, 2012

I've talked about my desire to write a reincarnation story a lot. And now it's becoming a reality. I even have a cover! I absolutely adore the cover Rae Monet did for me for Twisted By Love, Reincarnation Tales, Book 1. The first draft is complete so I hope to have this book out sometime in August! It’s a sexy tale with a dash of suspense. Here’s a blurb to pique your interest.

A love that spans lifetimes, an evil that has followed them through the ages...

Bern Daniels doesn’t believe in ghosts, UFOs, or reincarnation, but when he sees Livie Scott, it’s as if he’s known her forever. Now he can’t get her out of his mind. He wants her in his bed and in his life. For keeps.

Livie is unaccountably drawn to the tall, dark stranger. He literally sweeps her off her feet. And Livie is oh so willing to let him. But her sister Toni is planted firmly in her path to happiness. She’s had to choose between Toni and her man before; is she destined to repeat the same twisted game with her sister over and over?

When Livie and Bern brave the obstacles between them, they soon discover there are shadows lurking from their past, past lives that is, which threaten everything they believe in, everything they want. And even their lives.
Hmm, so how does the snake on the cover fit into the story? Livie is plagued by recurring nightmares. And guess what image is extremely prominent in those dreams! Here’s a little excerpt to give you an idea:

Livie buried her arms elbow deep in the warm, soapy water. She loved doing dishes by hand, as odd as that sounded. Her fingers wrinkled, and it probably wreaked havoc on her manicure, but the water warmed her straight through to her toes. She loved a clean kitchen. She loved order and neatness and everything in its proper place. She loved an established routine and—

Something hit her on the cheek with a splat, slid down her face, and landed with a plop in the water, sinking before she actually saw what it was. She brushed her cheek with a wet hand, soap suds settling close to her eye. She wiped those off with her shoulder, then wallowed in the water searching for what had hit her.

Something slimy slithered across her fingers and skittered away. She jerked, water splashing over the edges of the sink. In the kitchen doorway, her sister giggled. A girlish giggle laced with malice. Another watery splat, this time on the back of her head, and the thing, whatever it was, slid down her neck into her blouse.

Just then, the one in the sink poked its head above the water. A snake, a slimy, horrible, fat snake with huge fangs that sank into the soft flesh between her thumb and forefinger.

Livie started screaming when she felt the snake down her blouse start to wriggle and slither all over her, biting...

“Wake up, Livie.” Toni shook her.

Livie woke to realize her nightgown was tangled around her legs and the snakes were only in her nightmare.

“Je-sus. What’s wrong with you?” Toni hunkered down on her pillow and stared. “I thought you were going to start screaming out loud any moment, instead of just that weird, awful moaning.”

Her throat dry and tight, Livie laid there a moment, letting her breathing return to normal. She hated reptiles: lizards, frogs, slugs, banana slugs, but most especially snakes. Spiders were okay, as long as they didn’t get in her hair or her clothes. But snakes were the worst, and the worst of the worst was not being able to get them off. This was the second night in a row she’d had a similar nightmare.

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Hope you enjoyed that scary little excerpt! And if that’s not enough, coming up, I’ve also got a sequel to Kinky Neighbors. So many people asked, and now you’ve got it, Kinky Neighbors Two: Cat and Logan’s Just Desserts. I love the cover Rae made for the second book. It has the same flavor as the first book (cover by Rosemary Gunn), but the photo is so Cat, that sneaky little look in her eye. Here’s something to whet your appetite:

The Mitchells and the Harts, kinky next-door neighbors, a little wife-swapping and some very hot foursome sex. But things didn’t go quite as planned for these kinky neighbors...

Now, in Kinky Neighbors Two, find out where these two naughty couples are now and what kinky adventures they’ve gotten themselves into. Will they all have a happy ending? Will they go back to the way things were? Is that even possible? Or will someone get their just desserts?

“Baby, this is going to be so good,” Cat purred in his ear as she knotted the rope around his wrist and tied his left hand to the bed post.

Logan Hart had no doubt it would be good. Cat was an extraordinary lover with a filthy mind. Nothing was taboo. He’d had her every way a man possibly could. And he’d let her do things to him that his ex-wife didn’t even know could be done. Alexis wasn’t a prude, but until the foursome they’d started last year in Tahoe, she’d been pretty vanilla, her wild and crazy moments few and far between.

Cat crawled over his belly, the crotch of her panties caressing his cock. “Baby, baby,” she cooed, “You’re already hard.”

“Hell yeah,” he said. Naked, hard, and ready for anything. Cat wore a skimpy little sundress and panties, that was all. She’d been sunning in the backyard during the afternoon, and the hot August rays had left her skin still warm to the touch.

Cat ran a few degrees hotter than most, in more ways than one. That heat was the reason for his divorce. And hers. After they’d started the whole wife-swapping thing, he couldn’t get enough of her. Personally, he couldn’t really see the difference between fucking Cat in front of Alexis versus fucking her in the afternoon when Alexis was at work. How could that be betrayal? Yet both Alexis and Cat’s husband, Drew, had seen it differently. So now he was divorced and living with Cat. Ah, the changes a year wrought.

With both his hands now secured, Cat crawled down the end of the bed. She hiked her dress up over her firm ass, and he could see the dampness of her panties.

“How about a little suck?” he cajoled. “I promise not to come.”

From the bottom of the bed, where she was working on restraining his legs, Cat shot him a sultry look and shook her finger at him. “Uh-uh-uh. No samples. I want you harder and hotter than you’ve ever been.”

They hadn’t had sex in three days. She hadn’t even let him whack off. She wanted him crazy with need for her little surprise. He couldn’t wait to find out what it was.

“I’m dying here.” Those three days had been a killer.

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That naughty Cat, what has she got planned for Logan? In the coming weeks, I’m going to do Kinky Neighbors Two on the blog, just like I did the first book. You’ll be able to buy it if you want it all at once, but if you’re patient, you’ll get the whole thing in chapters on the blog. More on the date for that coming up.

I’ve got an announcement! I’ve just signed a new two-book contract with Berkley Heat. The books will be in the same vein as The Principal’s Office, with heroines over 35 and they will feature some elements of bondage. Actually I call it bondage lite, with a little spanking, a little tying up, that kind of thing. One of the things I like to do is add romance to every-day life, so the stories will be more than sex, sex, sex. You can expect to see those books starting in the latter half of 2013.

And a little bit of promo! July brings us Smashwords summer/winter sale! You can try Dead to the Max and Double the Pleasure for free! Go to my Smashwords page: http://bit.ly/RcUiWd, and enter the code SSWIN at checkout. She’s Gotta Be Mine by Jennifer Skully (me!) is free on http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00688GE7Q (until they see that it’s back to regular price on iTunes!) and Smashwords (use the SSWIN code). Beauty or the Bitch, a contemporary retelling of Beauty and the Beast (with a twist!) is also free on http://amzn.to/mTMny0, plus all the other major retailers . I’ve done the story as a free read on the blog, but if you missed it, here’s your chance to get it for free!

Monday, July 16, 2012

I'd like to welcome my good friend Nikki Prince with her new release, Mocha Kisses. This is her first release. She gave me a sneak preview of it, and I must say it's absolutely wonderful. I'll let Nikki tell you all about it and give you a sexy excerpt!

Hello Jasmine thank you for having me on your fantastic blog again.

Mocha Kisses came about as a challenge to myself. I saw the call for submission in an email and I was like I need to see if I can write a short story. All the times I've been writing since I was a kid I tried writing a short story and I've always had too much going on in the story for it to be short. So my challenge to myself was to try and get a story to at least 4k and have it flow and not be so full of stuff that it needed to be longer.

So I sat there looking at the submission call and it spoke about the story needing to be around memoirs, coffee, a cafe and/or mocha. So I thought long and hard and the characters were born. I have a true love for cougar romances as I can speak from experience on it. My husband happens to be 11 years younger than I am. So what I did was basically put my love for younger men, and chocolate together and Mocha Kisses was born. :)

A shadow fell across the book Meredith was reading as she sat at the well-lit café table. She frowned, but soon smiled when she looked up to see her friend and fellow chocoholic, Ronan. The product of an Irish mother and a Greek father, Ronan was very easy on the eyes and the amazing thing about him was that he wasn’t the typical arrogant pretty boy. He was, in fact, a computer genius. A geek that made her panties wet just thinking about him.

Shit! Stop it Meredith he's too damn young!

Meredith jumped up and was immediately enveloped in his strong arms. She uttered a soft sound of pleasure as he pulled her in closely. She loved how his arms felt around her and she lingered in his embrace a bit even after she felt his arms relax. He eased back from her with a smile. Gazing up at his ruggedly handsome face—youthful face—Meredith reminded herself that Ronan was ten years younger than her. He pressed his lips to each of her cheeks in turn, pulling back so fast that she didn’t have time to wonder whether it would spoil their friendship if she turned her head so their lips met. But she wanted to. Oh, god how she wanted to. Settling in her seat, she watched as he took the empty chair across from her.

“It's good to see you.” He was so sexy in his glasses, dress shirt with red tie and black dress slacks—ever the computer programmer. She adored his smarts.

“It’s been too long, beautiful. I’m sorry I missed meeting you last month. Some things came up and I couldn’t get away.”

They’d met by accident. She’d signed up for a book club that was supposed to meet at the café and he’d signed up to meet others that same night, but for a different book club discussion. Thinking they were both from the same club, they’d sat at the same table. When it became apparent they were the only ones showing up for their respective meetings, they’d decided to continue to meet monthly. It just seemed a natural progression, with their mutual love for books, to continue meeting. Hell, it didn’t hurt he’d been good to look at. She’d be lying if that hadn’t been part of her attraction in staying.

She grinned and couldn’t help teasing him. “Did that have anything to do with that shapely redhead you were with when we met?”

He chuckled, “Jennifer and I are no longer seeing each other and haven’t been for quite a while, so, no. I had a few other matters that I had to take care of.” She knew she appeared surprised, but to learn that he was free was both exciting and worrisome. Exciting because, let’s face it, Jennifer had been a bitch of the first order. Worrisome because Ronan only saw Meredith as an older friend, so her attraction to him was going to go unrequited, and she’d have to watch him with some other female. At twenty-five, he was already a successful entrepreneur and had so much going for him. “Ah well, I’m sorry about that, Ronan.” Yikes. She hoped she hadn't hit a sore spot. Her next thought was about the pact they’d made. It had been a joke of sorts; to be honest, she'd thought he'd been joking, but she hadn't been.

“Don’t be. Things happen for a reason.” He gave her one of those charming smiles and she couldn’t help but smile back. His words made her feel better.

“Well, as long as you’re not heartbroken….”

“It allows me to pursue another avenue.” She knew her mouth fell open and she had to force herself to close it.

Monday, July 9, 2012

Thanks for visiting on my blog, Sue! It’s a pleasure to have you. Sue has an excerpt of Spy Game for us today! What a great cover!

Fledgling agent Ani Sharif has finally been assigned to her first undercover mission—to seduce software tycoon Richard Rexford, known as the fearsome T-Rex of Silicon Valley. He's suspected of selling software secrets to the Chinese. Ani must succeed at her first assignment, but will handsome, clever Richard uncover her secrets and seize her heart?

Spy Game by Sue Swift
Prologue

San Francisco, California

On Saturday afternoon, Gar saw an umbrella hung in the signal tree in Golden Gate Park, so he met his contact in the Castro at midnight. To anyone watching, they’d look like two guys outside a crowded bar, sharing a smoke, but his contact passed Gar a tiny package, a package worth millions to his customers in Indonesia.

He tucked the package inside his jacket and mounted his motorcycle, heading for Potrero Hill and the shelter of a safe house. As he passed through a residential area, he slowed, and only then did he hear the growl of another motorcycle on his tail. At first he thought it was happenstance, but as he turned one corner and then the next, with the following motorcycle’s roar ringing and banging in his ears, he realized he’d been tagged.

Gar tried every trick he knew to shake the tail, but nothing worked. Too late, he saw that he’d been herded toward the shore of the bay, heading too fast down a dead-end alley, with warehouses on each side and a chained metal gate in front of him.

Braking too hard, he jerked the bike into a sharp turn in front of the ten-foot-high gate. The bike slewed on the slick, damp street, drawing a screeching curve to the left before crashing into the cyclone fence.

He hit hard and went down, his bike clattering on its side, sliding out of the fog lamp’s amber halo into the dark, misty night.

In a haze of pain, he lay stunned on the pavement, moving in and out of consciousness, with the bitterness of failure flooding his mouth.

The other motorcycle stopped. Gar heard the scrape of boots on asphalt. Blinking, he raised his heavy head a fraction to see an hourglass figure silhouetted against the golden light. He groaned and dropped his head back. One hand scrabbled toward the precious parcel, seeking to protect it.

The boots stopped close to his head. Too close, but nothing he could do about it. Too weak. Too much pain. Should have worn a helmet…

She had a jaunty smile and eyes that gleamed green even in the dim light. Opening his jacket, she removed the package, which contained the prototype of the computerized brain that would run some of the United States’ newest, most sophisticated guided missiles.

“Thank you.” She tucked the package into her jacket and walked away, her boots crunching. He heard her bike kick, catch, and roar away, its growl receding into the misty night.

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Best-selling, award-winning author Sue Swift, a.k.a Suz deMello, has written over fifteen novels, plus several short stories and non-fiction articles. She writes in numerous genres including romance, mystery, paranormal, historical, contemporary comedy and erotica. She’s a freelance editor who’s worked for Total-E-Bound, Ai Press, Liquid Silver Books and Etopia Press. She also takes on private clients.

Her books have been favorably reviewed in PW, Kirkus and Booklist, attained the finals of the RITA and reached the top ten on a bestseller list.

A former trial attorney, she resides in northern California. Her passion is world travel, and she’s left the US over a dozen times, including stints working overseas for many months. Right now, she's working on her next manuscript and planning her next trip.

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NY Times and USA Today bestselling author Jennifer Skully is a lover of contemporary romance, bringing you poignant tales peopled with hilarious characters that will make you laugh and make you cry. Writing as Jasmine Haynes, she’s authored over 35 classy, sensual romance tales about real issues like growing older, facing divorce, starting over. Her books have passion and heart and humor and happy endings, even if they aren't always traditional. She also writes gritty, paranormal mysteries in the Max Starr series. Having penned stories since the moment she learned to write, she now lives in the Redwoods of NorthernCalifornia with her husband and their adorable nuisance of a cat who totally runs the household.